Political Waves » 2008 » January

Archive for January 22nd, 2008

Jose can you see …

Jose Padilla, American citizen and paranoid basket case [after years under Black Ops gulag conditions] has finally been sentenced to 17 years, 4 months in prison — downright American, huh? Over at WhatReallyHappened.com they said it this way:

17 years?

Well — since Jose is such a psychotic mess at this point, at least he’ll have a nice warm cell rather than an overpass to sleep under. This is such a repudiation of democratic process that it sickens me — but it’s one example of thousands in the news, today. THOUSANDS. Every article I scrutinize for posting here speaks to the brutalization of our values and the radical coup that passes for government.

We got here one step at a time — a gazillion incidents of citizens “letting it pass” rather than acting on principal.

I read a piece today over at Huffington that reminded me how that works … little events, little confrontations with power and bias, little strikes against injustice; if enough of us had taken a stand on them, perhaps we’d be in a different place today.

I could post on one of the 4-alarm’ers going on today, but instead I’m gonna post that read — and my blog comments [I occasionally blog over at Huffy, nowhere else.] Take it to heart — we run into stuff all day long that we need to stand up to and don’t … this is a good reminder how being “gracious” does not always serve us. Remember, if Nixon had done some orange jumpsuit time, Bush would have thought twice — and never had opportunity to push through legislation that automatically “pardoned” him from any war crimes he might have initiated after 9/11. [Or broken the law by erasing e-mails, public records, and expecting to get away with it.]

In matters of principal, we’ve gotta get our heads screwed on, even though it’s scarier than ever to stand up for it now. The second article here is about a hero — Father John Dear — who is facing prison for anti-war activism and standing on the principals of his religious convictions. His is a message … and activity … Martin Luther King would completely understand, and champion.

When we put the husk of a man [who was tossed around like a political football until he came unraveled by cruel interrogation] into jail for 17 years on hazy charges, and summon a priest to be judged for his pro-piece conscience … while allowing Bush to mosey across the planet spreading a message that can be described as both stupid and hateful in the same breath … we have lost our moral compass and sentenced OURSELVES to chaos. [And by the way, it would be better if we could hear the Dubby's babbling ourselves, instead of being shielded by corporate MSM; go here to watch him affirm his intent to take on Iran militarily, given to an Israeli television commentator.]

Principal. We’d better stand on it and do it NOW*

Jude

* In that regard, I’ve included an activist/op from the ACLU first, a letter you can sign to Harry Reid, demanding he return to constitutionality as regards the FISA immunity issues. Old Harry ain’t so much … but he’s what we’ve got; weigh in for justice, and after you add your name, pass it around.

Act Now To Protect Your Privacy
http://www.alternet.org

As the Bush administration continues to amend the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, Americans are losing their right to privacy. This week, Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid has an opportunity to lead Congress in upholding the Constitution by rejecting Bush’s demand for telecom immunity and individual warrants for Americans. Our privacy and freedom is at stake. Act now with the ACLU to protect our right to privacy and uphold the Constitution.

Finding Myself in an Italian Tablecloth
Sherman Yellen, HuffPo
January 22, 2008

It is strange how a combination of events and objects can bring the past home again, spanning long periods of time in a moment. I’m hardly the first to recognize this: Marcel Proust wrote a masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past based on this notion. The recent death of chess genius Bobby Fischer, that reclusive Holocaust denier and half-Jewish anti-Semite, together with the revelation that Ron Paul, the iconoclastic Republican candidate had at one time written or supported anti-Semitic articles under his own name, somehow fused with a grey organdy tablecloth hidden away in a linen closet in our apartment, and brought about some sort of time travel into my own past. I won’t glorify it by calling it an epiphany, but in a funny way it was akin to one.

My wife and I have been trying to simplify our cluttered lives by giving away, selling, or donating to charity “stuff” that fills our closets and no longer has a place in our everyday life. We came upon the tablecloth as we investigated the back of that linen closet which contained some broken antique lamps, ancient perfume bottles, and other never to be used again items. The tablecloth was wrapped in fine tissue paper and seemed as crisp, and new as the day it had been purchased. It had seen little if any use during its 50-odd year history.

My wife observed that nobody uses such tablecloths anymore, least of all organdy ones with white hand sewn flowers on them. Together with its 12 matching napkins it had been bought by us as a gift for my mother-in-law in 1953 when my wife and I were on our honeymoon in Florence, Italy. It had come into our possession a few years ago when my mother-in-law died in her early nineties. Somehow, we couldn’t add the tablecloth to the pile of give-aways. As I studied it I knew at once that it had a special meaning for me and the reason could be traced to a dinner party in a dilapidated villa in Fiesole, outside of Florence many years ago.

We were on our wedding trip when we arrived in Florence without hotel reservations — my lifelong bad habit, and, after checking into a modest railway hotel, we visited the museums, saw the required Michelangelo and Botticelli, we purchased inexpensive gift shop reproductions of Fra Angelica saints, gilded and glued on to wooden panels, together with some hand-tooled leather goods as souvenirs for our families back home. The dollar was strong in the fifties, nothing cost a great deal for an American in Europe, one could live comfortably there on 10 dollars a day, or so the guide books told us. Leaving a museum we came upon a small linen shop where we hoped to purchase some table linens for my wife’s mother who had asked us to buy her a new table-cloth in Florence.

The woman who owned and ran the shop introduced herself as the Contessa Montevello, or Montebello, I don’t quite recall, but Contessa she surely was. She was an elegant grey-haired woman in her late forties who spoke English with an Oxford accent, ever so faintly tinged with an Italian rhythm. It was evident that she was not by birth or custom a shop-keeper; this was the result of the war which turned royalty into peddlers, long before the arrival of the Ralph Laurens, the Tommy Hilfigers, and the Diane von Furstenbergs who turned peddlers into royalty.

The Contessa showed us a variety of hand-made cloths she had for sale, treating each item with the reverence reserved for the very best merchandise made for the very best clientele. My wife selected a muted grey and white organdy table-cloth and napkins knowing that this would please her mother’s simple taste. “A wise choice,” the Contessa declared, commending my wife for her judgment which had rejected the brightly embroidered linens.

As she wrapped the tablecloth in tissue paper and ribbon, the Contessa then asked me what I did in the world and I told her that I was a recent college graduate, a writer, or at least an aspiring one. “Wonderful!” she exclaimed. You must meet Jamie Hamilton. He’s visiting me with his wife, my cousin, the Contessa Pallavicino. You’ll adore Yvonne and Jamie, and they will love you,” she assured us, looking with approval at my beautiful bride. She went on to explain that Jamie was better known as Hamish Hamilton, the successful British publisher and one time Olympic rowing champion, the publisher of such authors as John Paul Sartre and Albert Camus; just part of his long list of literary luminaries. I had heard of this man and I was impressed. More than that, I entertained the hope that someday he might publish my work in England should I ever write a novel.

“You’ll come to dinner tonight?” the Contessa asked, less a request than a command. The Contessa took down our address so that she could send her driver to pick us up. When she discovered that we were staying in the railway hotel she declared it fit only for whores and anarchists, not for a charming young couple and suggested a beautiful but inexpensive pension nearby into which we moved as soon as we returned to the hotel. We packed our heavy leather wedding-gift luggage, placing the tablecloth carefully inside, encased in the tissue paper to keep it from creasing.

Early that evening we were picked up at the pension by an elderly man in chauffeur’s livery. He held the door open to a large, ancient, gleaming, black Bentley with enormous bug-eyed headlights, ushering us inside where we sat on deep maroon leather upholstery. It was like being seated in a fine old theatre rather than an automobile. So this was Europe! The real Europe, where struggling aristocracy managed to keep up the appearance of luxury by living on pride and willpower alone. We were having a Henry James adventure; a young American couple on their first time abroad, dining with an impoverished Italian countess, and who knew where this could take us? Intrigue awaited as layers of motivation would be peeled away and we would see the worldly heart of old Europe. Better than that, we were Zelda and Scott without the drinking, the breakdowns or the despair. Being in our very early twenties, everything seemed possible. One day you’re living in a fleabag hotel, that same night you are on your way to a Contessa’s villa in a luxury auto to meet a famous British publisher and his aristocratic Italian wife…

It was dusk as we drove through the Fiesole woods in that enormous black vehicle, down a long gravel driveway bordered by conifer trees towards a villa with just the right amount of peeling stucco and faded geraniums in old stone pots, where the Contessa stood waiting to welcome us in her pre-war silver lame evening gown. She hooked her arms between ours and led us inside the villa to meet the other guests. The great drawing room was furnished with ancestral paintings, old tapestries and tattered sofas and chairs, many of which had horsehair stuffing peeping out of the torn upholstery, betraying the aristocratic indifference of the owner as much as her poverty. The Contessa explained that the Germans had requisitioned her villa during the last days of the war and that they had done much damage to it, damage she could not afford to repair. She was currently renting out a whole wing of the villa to some rich Americans; and noisy and disagreeable as they were, she would rather do that than sell this home, one that had been in her late husband’s family for hundreds of years. “The war took everything, you know,” she said, without further explanation. We assumed that the “everything” she referred to included her husband, her wealth, and her former life. It was less than seven years since the end of WWII, and we understood that not only working class Italians but many in the Italian aristocracy had suffered much from Mussolini’s fascism, and the Allied bombing of Italy.

Jamie Hamilton proved to be as charming and erudite as the Contessa had claimed he would be. I won his approval by praising an inexpensive edition of Middlemarch that he had published several years before; one with colorful, marbleized end papers. I owned a mildewed copy of that book which bore his company’s trade name, having picked it up in a second-hand bookshop in Bermuda during a school holiday. His lovely, aristocratic Italian wife had a warm, welcoming smile and a genius for putting a self-conscious young couple at their ease, advising us as to what we should see, where we should eat, and what we should avoid in Firenze. We were seated near the Hamiltons when halfway through the meal Jamie Hamilton asked me, “Have you read many Italian writers?” I replied that I had enjoyed the works of Italo Svevo, Carlo Levi and Alberto Moravia, hoping to impress him with my knowledge of European literature, while in truth I had just exhausted the names of the only three Italian authors I knew. It was then that my hostess, the Contessa laughed, as if she was about to betray a wicked secret, remarking, “You mean Smitz and Pincherle?” I looked confused. She went on; “Those are their real names. They are all Jews, hiding behind distinguished Italian names, all except Levi who couldn’t conceal his wretched origins no matter how hard he might try. No Italian is deceived by this. The Jews will do anything to hide their true heritage. It’s quite disgusting, but fortunately they are always found out. Communists — all of them. If I can forgive the Germans anything, which is not easy after what they did to Italy, I can forgive them for getting rid of so many Jews.” I waited for Jamie or his wife to respond, to argue with her, to contradict her statement, but no one said anything. They went on eating and drinking undisturbed as the Countess ended her diatribe and flashed her smile at me, satisfied that she had improved my education in the true nature of Italian writers.

A bit of personal background here. Although I had been raised with the knowledge that my family was Jewish, my parents wanted their children to enter into the mainstream of American life and we were raised in upper middle class comfort in New York City, with only a minimum of religious education. If we had any larger identity other than as a family, it was as New Yorkers. While growing up in the city I had never come up against any anti-Semitic remarks. This was during the early ’40s in America, a time of Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh, vicious anti-Semites who had a wide following during the Depression and years after. Hardship, I’ve learned, doesn’t often make people better, it just makes them harder. And hard times seek out easy victims for blame, and the Depression was one of those times. But growing up in a cosmopolitan city, a city with a large Jewish population, had sheltered me from overt signs of bigotry, although once as a 10-year-old on vacation in Miami with my family we passed a sign on the Kennelworth Hotel reading “No Jews or dogs allowed.” When I asked my father about it he simply said that these people were idiots and I should pay no mind to that sign. And I didn’t.

When I was a small child my mother had made the mistake of renting a beach house in a Long Island resort town that she later learned was “restricted.” I was told years later that we children were shunned by the neighbor’s children when an elderly immigrant aunt of ours had come to visit, her presence revealing our Jewish origins. But never before in my personal life had I heard anyone make an anti-Semitic remark. I was neither ashamed nor proud of my background. I saw no reason to be proud of anything you didn’t create like your religion, your race, or your appearance. But I was not so naïve as to think they didn’t matter in the world. My wife who was also Jewish had that Swedish, Garbo-like beauty that was so admired in America and elsewhere at that time, and beauty, great beauty often trumps bigotry. And I did not “look Jewish” in the parlance of the day — a horrible expression — but true for those who had preconceived notions as to how Jews, the most varied of people, actually looked. Many took me for a young Italian, even in Italy people first spoke to me in Italian, something that pleased me, and disappointed them when I replied in English or opened up my small phrase book to reply. I wanted more than anything to blend in wherever I was so I could watch and listen and take mental notes for the future masterpieces I was sure to write. And here I was in this villa in the Fiesole, when all the artifice of civilization was peeled away like the villa’s rotting stucco, and I was staring into the face of a deep, ugly racial hatred.

I didn’t plan it. Without thinking I rose from my chair and turned to my wife saying, “We have to go, love.” Everyone looked up at us surprised. The Contessa asked if I was ill. I replied, “No, not ill, merely Jewish.” She looked stunned. I repeated my remark in a more direct way. “I am a Jew. My wife and I — we’re both Jewish.”

I don’t recall if it was the Contessa or Jamie Hamilton who responded, “Really, I thought you were Canadian.” On any other night I would have laughed at the absurdity of that remark but this was no night for laughter. I realized that I never wanted to be defined by anything but my own character and my own talents, and I believed that I had gone beyond race and religion when I immersed myself in world literature, but I had been faced by a challenge that night for which there was only one reply, identifying oneself with the despised group.

The Contessa offered us her driver to take us back to the pension but I refused her in a steely show of controlled outrage and independence. I would not be beholden to her for anything, not even a lift back to Florence. We nodded goodbye to Jamie Hamilton and his wife without the customary handshake and made our way out of the villa. It was now a very dark, starless night and I realized soon after we reached the end of the driveway that we would have to make our way through a road in the woods to the main highway, and that road had many forks and turnings. Need I add that we were soon miserably lost in those woods? We were Hansel and Gretel without the trail of bread-crumbs. It took us two hours to find our way to the nearby main highway when I finally saw the distant lamplights on the roadway through the trees and we headed towards the lights. We finally flagged down a bus and made our way back to Florence.

Somehow, looking at that table-cloth again, and reading about Bobby Fischer and Ron Paul brought this whole misadventure back to me with such clarity. It seems that anti-Semitism often sleeps late, but it always awakens and it never dies. I have spent a lifetime believing that I am a part of the family of man, and avoiding the formal religious aspect of life, finding the beliefs of others something I accept with ease but without any desire to partake of those beliefs. I realize that for many this reveals my great limitations of mind and spirit; and that for them my life is narrow and circumscribed, without spiritual comfort or the hope of redemption. Since religion is to me so divisive, it seems responsible for much of mankind’s misery as much as it offers comfort, and I regard all organized religion as a drowning pool in which I don’t want to swim. But on that dark night in the Fiesole outside of Florence I knew that I was a Jew, and that I could not live with myself if I did not declare it openly in response to that ugly table talk, the kind of talk that had previously led to the death of millions of my fellow Jews. I knew that I would not have been spared by my love of books or my wife’s beauty had I lived in Europe during the war years, certainly not by the likes of that Contessa. That night I was no New Yorker, and I was certainly no hero. I was simply someone who had found a moment of clarity, a discovery that would stay with me for life; and all because we had purchased that organdy table cloth in Florence. And so, the other day, I decided to keep the table cloth as a reminder of times past, a time when I learned that I was not Scott Fitzgerald, not Italian or even a Canadian, no citizen of the world, but that I was simply, inexorably me.

The preceding was adapted from Spotless, a memoir by Sherman Yellen — a work in progress.

comments by JudeWaves

Bravo, for both the story and the principled stand; I expect it set the path for your life. Odd how we reach these turning points and they fade from memory, but make all the difference.

In the 60’s, as a teen in college, I brought home a black friend. I lived in a multi-generational home, my great-grandfather a little dotty and unable to get around; my working parents had hired a woman as caregiver and quasi-housekeeper. She was a piece of work, fancied herself a faded Southern belle on hard times, but Pop adored her, so she was tolerated.

As a California girl, I had no appreciation of the kind of ignorance “Southern” could lend you. The front door was locked when we got there, so I rang the bell — this woman answered the door, shrieked when she saw us and slammed the door in our face, locking it. My friend just shrugged; perhaps she’d expected it. But I sure as hell didn’t. I spent every cent in my pocket on lunch for us at a drive in, aware that I couldn’t make that event “right” in any way and mortified to my Liberal, Kennedy’esque toes.

My parents took the woman to task, but they were in a bind; she had made herself emotionally indispensable to an octogenarian and our next move would have to be the long avoided option, placing him in a home. They caved and she stayed … until the day that she ran off with all of Pops valuables and a good deal of my wardrobe. I was not surprised.

“Evil” isn’t a huge, overt thing that comes out of the blue — it’s the daily emergence of racism, sexism, classism that seeks to strangle humanity’s best efforts.

Thanks for your article — you got me remembering, too.
http://www.politicalwaves.net

My Statement Before the Judge
John Dear, CommonDreams
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

It’s a powerful experience to stand before a judge and be sentenced to jail for saying No to war, injustice and nuclear weapons, something I highly recommend for all peacemakers. In these days of war, poverty, nuclear weapons, global warming, and violence of every description, I think it’s a blessing to be in trouble with the empire for practicing nonviolence, for daring to offer a word of peace, for serving the God of peace.

On Thursday morning, January 24th, I’ll stand in Federal Court in Albuquerque, New Mexico and be sentenced for our effort, nearly a year and a half ago now, to visit the office of our Senator. Judge Donald Svet asked us to write letters to him about ourselves, and allowed my co-defendants each to make a statement at their sentencing last November.

Here below are excerpts from my notes of what I will say in court on Thursday, if allowed. Regardless of the outcome for me, my hope is that more and more people will speak out against this evil, ongoing U.S. war on Iraq and in the process, reclaim the wisdom of nonviolence, as Dr. King taught.

I went to the Federal Building in Santa Fe, NM on September 26th, 2006 to present Senator Domenici’s office a copy of the “Declaration of Peace,” calling upon citizens everywhere, including Senators and Congressional Representatives, to speak out against the U.S. war and occupation on Iraq, to work to stop the war and pursue nonviolent solutions for the people of Iraq and the Middle East. I wanted the staff of Senator Domenici to fax the statement to him and ask him to sign it. Some of us had already mailed a copy to him, but had not received a response.

As a Christian and a priest who walks in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day and Mahatma Gandhi, I believe no Christian can support this war and still claim to follow the nonviolent Jesus because Jesus commands us to “put down the sword” and “love our enemies.” Jesus blesses peacemakers, not warmakers. Christians and all religious people are called to obey a higher law, God’s eternal law of nonviolence.

I wanted to explain to the Senator and his staff, that this war is a complete disaster for the U.S., Iraq, and the world. From the start, it was a complete fabrication. The President and the Pentagon claimed they were searching for weapons of mass destruction, even though many people around the world knew there were none in Iraq, and claimed that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks, which many also knew was impossible. The U.S. government used these lies to steal Iraq’s oil and further establish U.S. military control in the region. This war is illegal (in violation of international law and the Nuremberg Principles), totally unjust and immoral, downright impractical and mortally sinful.

In light of September 11th, this war has turned the entire world against our country, and sowed the seeds for future terrorist attacks against us. It does not promote security but instead threatens everyone’s security. It wreaks havoc on the people of Iraq and the Middle East, as well as our country and the people of New Mexico. It is also a complete waste of money. Those billions of dollars spent killing Iraqi children should be used instead to house the homeless, feed the hungry, provide universal healthcare and better schools, heal the returning veterans, and cleanup the environment, here in New Mexico, in Iraq, and throughout the world.

I want the Senator and the New Mexico government and the Federal courts and all government leaders to stop this war because it is killing thousands of U.S. soldiers, including New Mexicans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mainly civilians. No one deserves to die so that U.S. oil corporations can get richer, or for any reason. Our message is: the killing must stop now That day, I carried the names of every U.S. soldier killed, and some ten thousand Iraqi civilians killed, and read them aloud to remind myself and others of this reality. Although many people are now against this war, unfortunately, the killing still goes on, and still needs to stop.

So I hope that Senator Domenici, his staff, New Mexico’s government and the U.S. government will reverse its stand, stop the killing, end this evil war, make massive reparations to the people of Iraq, and seek new nonviolent, non-military policies for the people of Iraq, the United States and the world. I also hope that you, Judge Svet, will join us by working to end this evil war and pursuing God’s reign of nonviolence.

This morning, I think of Mahatma Gandhi as he stood before a judge on March 18, 1922.

“”Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good,” he said. I think this war is evil, and every effort to legalize this war and our weapons of mass destruction is evil, so I will continue to resist this evil war in a spirit of Christian nonviolence, love and truth. Accordingly, I will not pay any fine, nor will I undertake any community service; my whole life is community service. I can not cooperate with this unjust system which continues to kill sisters and brothers in Iraq and elsewhere.

As Gandhi said to his judge, I think you have two options: either renounce your guilty verdict upon me and join our campaign to end this war by upholding international law and the Nuremberg principles and supporting those who work nonviolently to end this war; or if you really support this unjust system which makes war, maintains weapons of mass destruction here in New Mexico, and kills people in Iraq and Afghanistan, then give me maximum sentence.

The whole world knows this war is a disaster. History will judge us all for where we stood, what we did, what we said at this kairos moment. I urge you to choose life, take a stand for peace, and call upon the whole country to speak out against this war and be converted to the truth of nonviolence.

But I take my case to a higher court, and plead before the ultimate judge, the God of peace, for us all: “Give us a new world without war, poverty or nuclear weapons, a new world where one and all live by your eternal law of nonviolence. Help us to end this war and abolish war forever. Thank you, God of peace, for hearing my plea. Amen.”

John Dear is the author of 25 books on peace and nonviolence, including most recently, “Transfiguration” (Doubleday, with a foreword by Archbishop Tutu). A new DVD, “The Narrow Path,” featuring his teachings on Gospel nonviolence, with music by Jackson Browne and Joan Baez, is available from www.sandamianofoundation.org To attend one of his speaking events, see: www.johndear.org. He writes a weekly column for “The National Catholic Reporter” at www.ncrcafe.org.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. london equity 125 loans home loan of america bank 125 125 loan program 1300 no credit loan mortgage 20 loan 1st 2nd refinance loans investors 1st car 2000 personal unsecured 00 loan loan personal credit bad 2002 Map

1 comment January 22nd, 2008

Archive for January 22nd, 2008

Jose can you see …

Calendar

Posts by Month

Posts by Category

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
« Dec				Feb »
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31